Taxpayers to the Rescue?

After lying derelict for over a decade plans are being pushed ahead
for a redevelopment of Whitehaven's old bus station.
The total Bus Station project cost is £4.1m, of which Sellafield
Ltd is providing £2.6m. It will create a hothouse for tech, digital,
media, and creative start-ups.
Alongside units for fledgling firms, the plan includes:
 Conference and meeting space for 75 people; (So what's wrong with
the Civic Hall!)
 An artisan food and drink outlet, open to the public;(So the town
needs another cafe??)
 Health and wellbeing facilities.
The scheme is part of the Energy Coast'sTransformation Programme, which
seeks to leverage public and private sector investment to help grow and
diversify the West Cumbrian economy.. Find
out more...

Number of Copeland
Councillors Slashed

Proposals for Copeland from the Electoral Commission mean that by the
time of next election...• Copeland should be represented by 33 councillors
, 18 fewer than there are now.
• Copeland should have 17 wards, eight fewer than there are now..
The recommendation should receive Parliamentary approval before the next
election.Full
report...

Spot the Mineshaft
near you!
An interactive map shows the many mine shafts that pepper
the area around Whitehaven and Cleator Moor. This information has been extracted
from the national coal mining database, held and maintained by the Coal
Authority. Go
to the interactive map....
And see more on the area's
mining... New undersea coal mine plans advanced in 2018

Pictured is an offshore drilling platform drilling to test for layers
of coking coal off St Bees Head.
West Cumbria Mining hope to start the extraction of coking coal off the
coast of St Bees, with a processing plant on the former Marchon site at
Kells. Coal would be treated at a processing plant using around a third
of the former Marchon site and covered by a dome, before being transferred
to a train loading facility on a siding built by WCM
south of the new Mirehouse train station.
See also the history of mining
in Whitehaven

Heritage Group Memories

A new booklet by Margaret Crosby "A Passion for Whitehaven" outlines
the work of the Heritage Action Group, including funding this 2013 mural
showing the town's connection to
Gulliver's Travels and Jonathan Swift. The book is an ideal Christmas
pressy from Michael Moon's bookshop.

Now in 2017 demolished, what was previously the town's swimming pool,
then became a nightclub, known to many from past decades as The Park.
Featured in the Daily
Mirror this picture of the sad interior remains of the Park
nightclub. Pic by Dave Wilson.

Whitehaven's Mutineer...

How one of the mutineers on the Bounty escaped the hangman's noose....Read
on

ONE of
the first times a black slave was permitted to share a white persons
burial plot in England happened in Whitehaven in 1700. And the Whitehaven
burial in St Nicholas churchyard, of the slave called Jane, was in
defiance of the then law stating that no African could be buried in a churchyard.
The burial was that of the slave servant of Mildred Gale, grandmother of
the first US president, George Washington. More.....